Kristin Smith, Executive Director of the Blockchain Association

Frank Chaparro and Ryan Todd speak to Kristin Smith, the Director of External Affairs at the Blockchain Association in this week's episode of The Scoop. Frank, Ryan, and Kristin discuss the implications of the case against Kik as well as the recently reintroduced Token Taxonomy Act. Kristin also reveals what it's like to represent leading crypto companies on the hill, and the reception of crypto and blockchain in D.C.

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The Blockchain Association, a Washington, D.C.-based industry group representing crypto companies before Congress and federal regulators, had positioned Smith as one of the crypto industry's most active advocates on Capitol Hill by the time of this conversation.

The episode arrives at a particularly consequential moment for crypto policy: Facebook had just unveiled its Libra stablecoin project in June 2019, immediately drawing intense scrutiny from lawmakers and regulators worldwide and thrusting digital-asset policy into mainstream political conversation in a way it had rarely reached before. Smith's organization found itself navigating a landscape where Libra's controversy risked shaping how Congress and agencies viewed the entire crypto industry, even for companies with no connection to Facebook's project. Smith and Chaparro walk through the year's major regulatory threads: how the SEC and CFTC were approaching jurisdiction over different types of digital assets, the state of pending legislation aimed at clarifying token classification, and how congressional hearings on Libra were spilling over into broader questions about stablecoins, custody, and consumer protection.

The conversation covers the Blockchain Association's role in educating lawmakers and staff who often had limited technical background in the space, and the delicate balance advocacy groups faced in supporting sensible regulation while pushing back on rules they viewed as overly restrictive or poorly suited to how the technology actually worked. Smith also discusses the industry's fragmented approach to lobbying at the time, with different companies and trade groups sometimes sending conflicting messages to policymakers, and why she saw a unified voice as essential heading into what promised to be an even more scrutinized 2020. The episode offers a timely, on-the-ground account of how Washington's crypto policy conversation shifted almost overnight once Libra entered the picture, and why Smith believed the industry needed to get ahead of that shift rather than simply react to it.